Hi David, below is following is a free association and thinking form
of a response, the same post, so the argument is not too serious yet,
and apologies for the sloppy english:
- The day before, before reading Bernardo's piece (
http://occupywallst.org/article/theory-thursday-it-not-revolution-it-new-networked/#.UunUtZqJ-sE.twitter),
I was reading two other good text. One of them was Richard Barbrook's
The Class of the New, and the other one was Kees van der Pijl's Left
Managerialism and Gramsci. Both were making similar points and
references to the renaissance moment. Both were addressing the
critical point of 'division or unity' between manual and mental
labour; former creates and reproduce and protects the hierarchy so the
class society, the letter liberates, emancipates and brings
resilience, both to the generator of such unified labour and his/her
community. Until bourgeoisie in the West, taken over the power
structure from the hands of kings and emperors with which they formed
alliances during the Renaissance -either by convincing them
peacefully or by force, and turning that power against the workers,
the wage slavery they have created- the horizon of the Renaissance
men's intellect was narrowed down or dismantled, developing and using
varying instruments by the new ruling classes. After this long
sentence, my point is, if we are to make today's Renaissance more
about global emancipation, so a path full of struggles that might
lead, this time, to a total liberation and classless human
civilisation, this had to be about dissolution of antagonism based on
the separation of mental and manual work, socialisation of property
and production, between work and care-loving-attention kind of labour
which is seen as feminine and demasculating, hence refused by man,
while in contrary it has been emancipatory and liberating.
Discussions around P2P, networked labour and practises emerging and
spreading, in a way, bear both option and perspective regrading this
unity and division point. It is a political / class choice to make,
depending where you stand, how to theorise the strategies the change,
inventing tools and tactics in buildings ties between action,
production, workers, makers, and other networks.. so on, towards which
way. Is it an option to theorise or putting a political practise
forward in favour of creation of a digital worker or produser
consciousness in contrast or superior to those non-digital workers
-those who has to produce but can not consume? To me, the way is to
theorise and practise is towards linking manual workers, say in
Bangladeshi textile sweatshops very often burn or crash down burying
hundreds of manual workers, and Foxconn's workers producing to
occupy-15M activists who wear those textile, or the technician and
engineers angry at the silicon valley -because he won't be able to
effort buy the next version of the iPhone he designed? such as the
99picket lines in US that organised and worked with Wallmart workers
to protest what happened in Bangladesh. Or think of hacker spaces,
fablabs, so on as labor-atories, ateliers where the unity of mental
and manual labour is being experimented and often achieved. DIY
culture, ethical economy, open source hardware production, so on are
similarly. Yet these guys needs to get linked urgently, to those who
has to work through temp agencies and can not effort smart phones,
tablet or PC in western cities as well as those mass manual labour
sites in Asia, Africa, and south America.
We are living a period in which the dirt of older regime and its
rulers' is getting out there massively public, thanks to the Internet.
The way these guys used to and does operate is being documented,
recorded, and published. Now they want to shut down the Internet, and
people knows why. There is clearly emancipatory potential in what
emerges as new, but also something dark, may be darker then
capitalism. While capitalist and capitalism is becoming a very dirty
word, new actors emerging like Facebook and Google, while
simultaneously authoreterian state-classes are gaining power in China,
Russia aswell as other places, they are getting big resources under
control. Both actors are not properly capitalists yet at the moment
still they play capitalistic cards, aligning or working with
traditional capitalists. Yet there is a potential in what they are
developing in terms of reorganisation of value creation and production
globally, can be completely different then the capitalists logic. The
intelligence they gather, both state-class and Facebook-google like
PRISM partners, is about all of the others and everyone else. At the
moment they sell it to companies, but what if later they develop
another mechanism that can beat capitalism. Something more based on
open use of force then hegemony, similar to fuedual way, that puts
people at work and harvest the value created to pass for the joy and
use of those locked up in the cities surrounded 'protected' by high
walls (we started to see ofter around the world)? Clearly Facebook,
Skype, Google, Microsoft have also gathered intelligence on CIA and
NSA managers, or Verizon has the ability to listen Obama and the
senate as well as all the state apparatus. So it is possible that new
class of rulers emerging today who might capture a structurally
higher, more advantageous position then those capitalist rulers of the
past! If this is the case, and if there is an emerging invisible
solidarity among the ruler and ruled of the future (those will be
'ruled in joy' among the high walls) protected by the rest.. then this
Renascence would lead to another civilisation but again with classes,
society may be even worse then today. So are the peer producers of the
today are revolutionary or would they be fine in a settlement of such?
Theorising and politics should not take the risk!
Interesting enough, remembering the discussions in the 90s about the
approaching renaissance in comparison to the civilizational change
took place between 14th to 17th century; mainly driven by fusion of
the Eastern inventions like paper and ink type, fire sand, cannons,
compass, and the Western ones, like the credit system, shipping so on;
the Renaissance was kind of an opening of relatively emancipatory
time-space corridor, a passage between feudal to capitalist
civilisation. For a while, all ranges of ideas emerged and spread
rapidly, all the possibilities they were not existing before came
about and became visible 'publicly' debated, painted. Horizon of
intellect and thus the actual possibilities before humanity, widened.
Simultaneously some of the dirty laundries of the earlier ruling
classed and how did they work out their stuff came out open and
discussed freely; scholastic thinking died, free thinking and acting
raised, again temporarily. Paper and ink accelerating the spread of
both dangerous and destructive ideas for church and feudal
aristocracy, and innovative and freeing ideas and tools for emerging
trade bourgeoisie were undermining the existing regime of exploitation
and control. This emerging trade bourgeoisie and the ideal absolute
monarch were sharing the virtues of the Renaissance Men, with an
exception: While the Renaissance Men was able to use mental mad manual
labour at the same time and he was eager to do so, enjoying also doing
the hassle work kind of mindfulness -as in Gandhi's preach- this made
'him' creative, inventory and liberated.. The king and to a certain
extend venture and adventurer bourgeoisie were not like this.. Here at
this point, lies the key to the future; total liberation or
emancipatory change or business as usual or even worse will it be?
On 31 January 2014 11:26, d.garcia <d.garcia {AT} new-tactical-research.co.uk> wrote:
> Re: The Techtopus:
> How Silicon Valley?s most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000
> tech engineers?
> wages
> By Mark Ames
<...>
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime {AT} kein.org